The seemingly never-ending slugfest between the Centre and state governments over the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has taken a new twist in Uttar Pradesh. The Union ministry of rural development, in a circular dated 11 March, has laid down detailed processes that will be invoked in cases where the Centre receives any complaint regarding the issue or improper utilisation of funds. Though the Central government notification...

CPI (Maoist) leaders have justified the killing of Niyamat Ansari alleging him to be a land broker, at a time when their sympathisers are condemning the murder terming it "brutal". In an interview with the TOI on Saturday, spokesperson for the Bihar Jharkhand North Chattisgarh Special Area Committee (BJNCSAC) Gopal Jee said Ansari was not known to the Maoists as MGNREGA whistle blower but as a middleman between timber mafia...

Out of 400 government offices in the Pune district, till January 2010, not even a single one had a board displaying the names of the Public Information Officer (PIO) or the Appelate Authority. However under the Right to information Act (RTI), 2005, it is mandatory for all offices to display such information prominently. A year later 240 of them have put up the boards with names, addresses and contact numbers of...

A few helpless spectators of injustice dived into past pain and picked out poignant personal tales at a national convention to understand if the Right to Information Act can help them turn back and undo a few wrongs. V. Narzary was one such youth who came all the way from the Bodo belt in Assam to ask experts whether he could revisit, through the RTI Act, a case where the army...

PAC member N.K. Singh recuses himself from meetings to avoid conflict of interest Two editors, Vinod Mehta of Outlook and Manu Joseph of Open magazine, told the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament on Monday it was their journalistic duty to place in the public domain the transcripts of tapped conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and others which had a direct bearing on the 2G spectrum allocation scandal. After the meeting, PAC...